I Will Save You (14 page)

I had a sick feeling in my stomach before I even noticed the gun in his hand.

“What’s that?” I said.

“A loaf of bread.”

“It’s not bread.”

“Dude, what do you think it is?”

“A gun.”

“Congratulations.”

Peanut stood up behind me and started growling at Devon.

“But where’d you even get it?” I said.

“You know I got connects, Special.” Devon looked down at Peanut, pointed the gun at him and said: “Pow.”

“Put it down,” I said, pushing the gun out of Peanut’s face.

“Calm down,” he said, tucking it in the back of his jeans. “I’m doing this for you.”

I tried to think was this actually happening or was I sleepwalking again. ’Cause in all the time I’d known Devon, he’d never had a gun before.

I wondered if he was getting worse.

“Hurry up and throw a shirt on,” Devon said. “We gotta do this now.”

“Do what?” I said, pulling a shirt over my head.

He didn’t answer.

He started walking and I followed, knowing whatever we
were gonna do would most likely be wrong and knowing I’d end up doing it anyway. My Horizons therapist would say I was in one of those moments of decision people have. The kind that can change your entire future.

I don’t know why, but I always chose wrong.

“Basically, there are two kinds of people in this world,” Devon said, walking along the dark ocean’s edge. “People of privilege and everybody else.”

I looked at the gun bulge in the back of his jeans, thinking how me and Olivia would be in different groups.

I stopped in my tracks, said: “I mean it. Why do you have a gun?”

Devon stopped, too. Smiled at me. “Look at Special trying to act all grown-up. Demanding information.”

“Just say it.”

“And here I thought the only role you played was Mr. Naïve Man. The token dummy.”

I stared at Devon as hard as I could, tried to focus on his eyes. But they kept shifting ’cause it was so dark, and ’cause Devon was always looking away from people.

“You gotta start trusting your boy,” he said. “Me and you got business to handle.”

“What business?”

“Big-boy business.”

“Is it something with Olivia?”

“Who’s Olivia?” Devon said, and I could tell he really didn’t know.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just what business?”

He stared back at me for a few seconds and then a smile
slowly went on his face and he said: “You mean that deformed blond chick you’re always stalking?”

“I’m not stalking.”

He laughed and pulled his gun from the back of his jeans and looked at the side of it. His face went serious. “Look, this is bigger than some chick,” he said. “And we don’t have time to BS.”

He started walking again and after a couple seconds I walked, too.

When I caught up to him he went on with what he was saying about the two groups: “What I seriously can’t stand is the entitlement vibe I get from rich people. They think they rule the world, Special. And technically maybe they do. Maybe
that’s
what pisses me off so much. I don’t know. But I hate that their lives mean more than ours just because there’s a higher number on their bank statements. Or because their cars are shinier or they have more bathrooms in their houses.”

We both stepped away from the tide when it rolled up to our feet. “Some of them could be nice, though,” I said.

“Of course some are nice,” he said.

“So what about
that
?”

“Here’s what you don’t get, Special. When you choose to take a stand in this world, you have to accept the fact that a few innocent people will get hurt. Revolutions are bloody, dude.”

“You’re starting a revolution?”

“Figure of speech, man.”

I thought about that as we kept walking. “It still doesn’t seem right.”

“It’s not. At least not on a case-by-case. But if the overall
benefit outweighs the individual harm, man … in the grand scheme of things you’re good. Not that I really care about being good.”

The tide came rushing up again, and this time Devon wasn’t as quick as me to get out of the way. Both his shoes got soaked. But he was too wrapped up in his revolution talk to even care.

“It makes me sick how some people live, Special. Eating caviar and going out on their yachts. While the rest of us are just trying to survive. Take those rich punks that hassled you a few nights ago.”

I looked at Devon and said: “Who?”

“Their parents pay all this money for college, give them spending cash, a fancy car to drive around campus. And look what happens?”

“You mean the guys by the lifeguard tower?”

“I can’t let people think they’re better than my boy, Special.”

I looked ahead of us, trying to figure out how Devon could’ve already found out what happened.

“If you think about it,” he said, “we’re just doing what their parents failed to. Teaching respect.”

He was waving the gun all around with his words now. And right then it hit me what was happening.

We were hunting those college guys with Devon’s gun.

“You trust me, Special?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Huh?” he said. “Do you?”

“My therapist told me people should try to make good decisions.”

“Your therapist is one of
them
, man. Don’t you get that? Do you know how many times I’ve seen her pull up to Horizons in that fancy Mercedes? Come on, dude.”

I pictured us all staring out the window as she stepped out of her car, pushing her sunglasses onto the top of her head.

“Of course she tells you that crap about making good decisions. You know why?”

“Why?”

“ ’Cause rich people are smart. The last thing she wants is some disturbed kid like you coming after her Benz. So she scares you into submission. Same with the rest of the Horizons kids. The more she works that Jedi mind trick, the safer she can feel about her possessions.”

That was the thing about Devon.

He was smart, too. Whenever he said stuff like that it always made me think. Even when it was stuff I didn’t
wanna
think about.

Way ahead I could see the abandoned lifeguard tower, and I could see there were people standing near it. I peeked again at Devon’s gun.

My stomach dropped.

“You know what she does after she tells you all this stuff about decision-making?”

I shook my head.

“She goes home to her corporate lawyer husband and they put on their fanciest rich-people clothes and they go to some expensive restaurant and order goddamn champagne, man.”

He stared at me, holding his hands out like it was simple,
the gun pointing at the ocean. When he looked forward again he put his arm out for me to stop and said: “Those the guys?”

I looked at them.

I nodded.

Making People Pay

“I already fought them,” I told Devon, pointing at the duct tape on my face.

“It’s not enough. Just because they have money doesn’t mean they can come up to my best friend like that. There are consequences.”

“How’d you know?” I said again.

He turned and looked at me. “Because I know, man. I heard them talking. Or I heard you talking when you were sleepwalking.”

“You know about that?”

“Or I heard your little girlfriend talking to her friends. Who cares. The point is, I know. And now, Special, it’s time to make people pay.”

He set off jogging toward them, holding the gun at his side, and when he got close enough he showed it and shouted: “Everybody down!”

I followed after Devon, watching all the college guys look up and watching their eyes grow big when they saw the gun.

“I said sit your ass down!”

All six of them quickly sat on the sand and looked at each other and back at Devon. The guy I head-butted had a big bandage on his nose.

Devon walked closer and aimed the gun at the head of the
smaller one, the guy who started the whole thing. “You. Come on over here. Now.”

The guy pointed at himself like he was asking a question. He looked at his friends and then slowly rose, his hands shoulder high and trembling.

I grabbed Devon’s arm, but he brushed me away.

“Let’s go, rich boy,” Devon said. “I want you to sit right here in front of me. That’s it. Easy now.”

The guy got up slowly and walked toward Devon, and Devon pointed with the gun where he wanted him to sit. The guy sat. “You think life is so easy,” Devon said to all of them. “Sitting in your frat house, drinking your beer, laughing at everybody doing work-study jobs. But things aren’t always funny, are they? Like tonight.”

Devon looked at the guy in front of him and pressed the gun up to his cheek. “You messed with the wrong kid last weekend, didn’t you, dude?”

The guy looked at the gun out of the corner of his eye and cowered and said: “I’m sorry.”

“You wanted to order people around. Say stuff to their innocent girlfriends.”

“I’m sorry,” the guy said again, his whole body starting to tremble. “Please, just let me go.”

“You wanted to hit somebody just ’cause he’s poor and you’re rich. You wanted him to know how much better you are. Isn’t that right?”

“No, I swear. I was just drunk and acting stupid.”

“You think you can do anything you want because you have money. But not tonight, huh?” Devon nudged the guy with the gun and cocked it and the guy closed his eyes.

A couple tears fell down his bright red face and he coughed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I swear to God.”

Devon looked at the rest of the guys and said: “Look at your little punk friend. Crying like a baby. Mommy and Daddy can’t buy his way out of this one, can they?”

“Let him go,” I said, grabbing Devon’s arm again. “They get it now.”

Devon brushed me off and swung his foot into the guy’s ribs. A retching sound coming from his mouth and him falling onto his stomach in the sand. Devon spit on his back. One of the other guys went to get up, but Devon pointed the gun at him and he sat back down.

Devon started laughing like a crazy person.

“Let’s just go,” I said.

He looked at me and pointed the gun at his own head and said: “You know what’s the difference between us and these rich assholes?” He laughed some more and spit in front of his wet shoes.

I didn’t say anything.

One of the guys sitting down said: “We’ll leave. We’ll never come back here.”

Devon turned back to them. “The difference is you guys actually believe your lives are meaningful.” He put the gun up to one of his eyeballs. “But it’s all an illusion.”

“You’re right, man,” one of the guys said.

“Me and Kidd here,” Devon said. “We already know how meaningless we are. The world has already shown us. You could learn a lot from poor kids like me and him.”

Devon pulled the gun from his own head with a big smile
and reached into his pocket for a knife. He flipped open the blade and held it up to the guys, said: “You see this?”

They all nodded.

“I wanna show you what it means when you know you’re nothing.”

“Please! We’ll just leave!”

“Let’s go,” I told Devon.

He turned to me, smiling. There was nothing in his eyes. It made me feel sick to my stomach.

He looked back at the guys and ripped open his shirt sleeve with the knife and then stabbed himself in the shoulder, the blood flowing down his arm, into his dangling hand. He pulled the knife out and laughed.

“Jesus,” one of the guys said.

I stared at the gushing blood.

“I know about myself,” Devon said, wiping the blood on his face. “I’m nobody. One day you rich punks will learn the same thing about yourselves.”

The guys were so scared. They wouldn’t even look at Devon.

“By the way,” Devon said. “If you go to the police about our little meeting tonight, I’ll hunt you down. You hear me?”

They nodded.

“And I’ll kill you.”

He motioned for me to follow him, and we took off running down the beach together, Devon laughing and me watching the gun waving all around in front of me with his steps and his blood drips hitting the sand.

•  •  •

Devon Pulls the Trigger

When we got close to the campsite stairs Devon grabbed my arm and stopped running. We both bent over to catch our breath. Neither of us said anything for over a minute. The only sound was Devon laughing.

“How amazing was that?” he finally said.

“It wasn’t,” I said.

“What are you talking about? We put those punks in their place, man. We restored order.”

I shook my head, still breathing hard. “I already fought them. Didn’t you see his bandage?”

“That was just a superficial wound,” Devon said. “We needed to hurt the guy on the inside. You see how he was crying like that? In front of his boys? That kind of wound doesn’t go away.”

Right then Devon stood upright and shoved the gun against his own head again.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“I’m proving what I said to them. How we have nothing. I’m living it.”

“It’s not true,” I said. “
I
have something.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s that? Name one thing.”

I thought of Olivia and her ski cap and our walk together. If I could see her even one more time, I thought. That would be something.

“I didn’t think so,” Devon said, cocking the gun.

“Don’t,” I said. I tried knocking it out of his hand, but he turned and kicked me away. Then he slashed me in the shoulder with his knife.

He put the gun back to his head, said: “I need you to see this, Special.”

“What are you doing?” I yelled, grabbing my shoulder.

“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t pull this trigger.”

I tried to think what I could say. What would make him realize. But I didn’t think fast enough.

“See?” Devon said. “Now I want you to watch. And I want you to remember this for the rest of your meaningless life.”

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

He pulled the trigger.

I yelled as the gun went off.

A puff of dark smoke lifting in the air.

But nothing happened. Devon was still standing there. And when he opened his eyes he started laughing like a crazy person, like it was the funniest thing in the world.